Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!sdcsvax!butcher From: butcher@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu (David Butcher ) Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops Subject: Re: Atari Portfolio Message-ID: <7696@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu> Date: 13 Jan 90 05:52:12 GMT References: Reply-To: butcher@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu.UCSD.EDU (David Butcher (Ugrad_Guest_FB)) Organization: U.C. San Diego Lines: 20 I recently got to test drive a Portfolio for about 2 months. In my opinion, I think it's brain dead. I am, however, looking forward to the next version of the Portfolio, it has a lot of promise. It comes stock with 28K of memory and the screen is half the size of normal. The little 128K rom cards cost about $100.00 each and there's only room for one. It came with a LapLink type utility to download programs from a PC into the Portfolio which was handy, but ran down the batteries. After about an hour of use the Portfolio's batteries died out. Unfortunately, they're non-rechargable. The keyboard is usuable only if you have tiny fingers. It comes with no graphics capabilities and the phone dialing utility is too quiet. Only after about five tries was I able to get my phone to recognize it. I don't remember what version of DOS it had, but it was very similar to DOS 2.0. On the plus side, it is SMALL and cheap. Compared to the Poquet, it's a steal for what you get. The keyboard is better then the Poquet. It's too bad the screen is half size and the batteries have such a short life. They provide a utility to mimic a full screen, but it ain't the same! Steve butcher@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu